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Clean solvents are going for green

By Rachel Nowak in Melbourne

NEXT time you take a pill, put on lipstick or even clean the toilet, spare a thought for the environment. Because to make medicines, cosmetics and bathroom cleaners, as well as paints, inks, plastics and lubricants, you need vast quantities of solvents to dissolve the chemical reagents. For every little pill, for example, you may produce 25,000 times its volume in solvent waste.

Those solvents are usually volatile organic compounds (VOCs), such as alcohols, ethers and hydrocarbons. And although the most toxic of them have been banned, those that remain contribute to smog, make …